No homework: Cesar A. Moreno

There is little care for accuracy into high school life in most forms of media. Particularly, there is little care for the nuances between circles, schools, and communities. My parents may claim that “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” encompassed school in the 80s, but I cannot find a single piece of similarly mainstream art that describes the meme-y, grungey, hooking up, hanging out, public transporting, AP-testing, innovative, and extraverted culture that is current teenhood. So, of course, the burden to create this art falls on the teens themselves.

This prompt, or perhaps this need to offer a glimpse into our lives, blooms artists like Cesar Moreno. An entirely self-taught videographer, screenwriter, and cinematographer, he captures the real-life of Los Altos High School. The silliness of his friends goofing off in class, the excitement of college announcements, the mundane routine of getting ready for school. It’s all there, raw.

“I have been an on and off editor for a few years now (Final Cut, Sony Vegas, iMovie). This is my crack at Adobe Premiere. The program is extremely new to me (about a week), but I am trying to cram as much as I can as quickly as I can. Most of the footage is shot with an iPhone 6s Plus at 60fps 1080p and uploaded at 480p to my YouTube, ME5AR. To put it plain, I don’t want to carry around something that’s bulky and expensive fix when I break it.

The footage is of my day. I don’t really know what to call these, but most call them vlogs. I’ve been wanting to document my day for some time now, but never wanted to tell the audience what they’re witnessing. The talking to the camera style of vlogging annoys me. Instead, I believe in talking with the camera to allow the film to direct where the story is going. “

Cesar A. Moreno is 17 and is a senior at Los Altos High School in Hacienda Heights. Check out the rest of his channel here. Commentary by Amelia Anthony.